The Cougar Lounge - Splashy Sizzler

"I really liked what was going on at Wazzu."

- Cougar football quarterback recruit Marshall Lobbestael, after taking his recruiting visit to Pullman this autumn and who was, of course, like all the other smart people on campus, talking about basketball season.

"We tell them from the start; if they come here, they're going to live in a glass house."

- Arizona men's head hoop coach Lute Olson, either indicating that incoming Wildcat hoop recruits can expect to be scrutinized mercilessly or not to have very high university housing expectations. The Lounge is never sure with Lute when he gets on one of his rambles.

"Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business."

- Famous dead person Frank Sinatra, circa 1965 from his swanky Vegas pad, who knew the Cougar hoop coach was going to be a talented multi-tasker [singing and coaching – the dynamic duo] even before he was born.

A succulent dosage of L-tryptophan was eagerly consumed at the exquisite Lounge banquet last week. In fact, once all the members of the clientele got going and got enough nog in them, they were not sure what they were eating after awhile. That can be a problem if you are a Russian spy not equipped with a cloaking device as we found out last week. We also found out that polonium 210 is the more lethal form of L-tryptophan – it's puts you to sleep alright, but for good. So the lesson here is - don't eat the sushi when it's mu-mu-mushy, sometimes cherry blossoms and rice can be not so nice. Meanwhile, the clientele were in a vulnerable state. They were right where the Wazzu marketing department wanted them after the 2006 football season – sleepy, missing a few brain cells and loose-walleted for holiday shopping season. But the only problem was: there was no bowl game waiting, licking their chops to take the 6-6 Cougars. Plus, it's basketball season. The Lounge was mildly distracted by football season when Pac-10 replay referee Gordon Riese - three months after the fact – announced that he knew his fellow Pac-10 officiating buffoons missed the call on the onside kick in the Oklahoma-Oregon game but that, even though he saw enough aspects to make the correct call, did not make that call because the replay rule planetary system did not perfectly align themselves to allow him to make the right call. So, three months later, we get – "Oh yeah, I saw it, but rules are rules." That's right, Gordie, rules are rules – it's officially basketball season.

"We're undefeated, baby!" yells Lounge newcomer West Side Patty, who was caught without her trusty satchel of polonium 210.

Okay, settle down there, Patty. Let's keep calm and not get too excited – we know the Spokane fans are following that example as there was yet another impressive display of indifference toward the Cougar men's hoop team as a whopping 3100 showed up to watch an UNDEFEATED Wazzu team remain that way in a close and entertaining game of hoops. Oh sure, the Gonzaga mafia [they're one big "family" and they make offers you can't refuse, apparently] will point out that Boise State is no North Carolina, but they're no Butler either and as we all know from literary backgrounds – the Butler did it. Meanwhile, it's the Cougars who are the Inland Northwest's only undefeated team and they are doing all that essentially without the services of Serbian guard Nikola Koprivica, who has yet to play after sitting out the first four games due to NCAA rules and getting only one measly minute from Aussie center Aron Baynes as he slowly recovers from injury. Despite not having those two available for much of the season so far, the Cougars are two games [this week at home against Portland and on the road against Utah] away from a regional showdown with Gonzaga in Pullman in two weeks [December 5 – watch how many Spokane fans come down then…to root for Gonzaga]. The Cougars should be undefeated then – or, at worst, 7-1 – and it will be a perfect measuring stick for the progress of the program.

"Fair is fair, but unfair is also unfair," says Question Mark, who prides himself on being able to form palindromes every Tuesday in December, but in this case is taking a break.

We know exactly what you mean, Q – you are as disgusted with the post-season hoops "arrangements" as the entire Lounge clientele is this week upon learning confirmation of what we already suspected – that the Pac-10 licks the boots of Fox Sports. Both men's and women's conference hoop tournaments have been planted – like an ostrich's head thrust in the sand – in Los Angeles and San Jose, respectively, ever since the concept of the Pac-10 post-season tournament was re-installed with the helpful suggestions of, you guessed it – Fox Sports. So now, instead of doing the fair thing and rotating the venue of the post-season tournaments for two-year stints in all the Pac-10 regions of Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland and Spokane, which would get much needed exposure and likely strengthen the Pac-10 brand on the West Coast - since most people look at it as USC [football] or UCLA [men's basketball] and a bunch of other schools – the tournaments stay in Los Angeles [men and where Fox is based] and San Jose [women]. This means every team but USC and UCLA for men and California and Stanford for women has to travel for the tournament while those four teams are assured of continually staying at home for as long as Fox can pull this kind of wool over the Pac-10's eyeballs. Currently, the only way for things to change is for cities to offer up incredibly lucrative deals to Fox which amount to one thing – essentially, bribery – and do only one thing, make Fox wealthier. Not surprisingly, most cities will not resort to bribery, although recently, Portland, sick and tired of the LA-based syndicate, has decided to try the pseudo-bribery route to see how greedy Fox really has become. Meanwhile, the conference suffers – except for those four California teams, naturally, don't want to cause them any travel hardships, heavens to Betsy! It makes one wonder - maybe this year's conference hoop tournaments will be the Pac-10 tournament sponsored by Polonium 210?

It was Black Friday and if you don't know what that is then it probably means you don't have many shopping-age females in the near vicinity this week or they were all checking out the Black Friday bargains. Just this once, the Lounge performs a public service for all nog-induced comatose men this weekend – Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, when all the stores' accounting ledgers allegedly turn to the "black". But tomorrow is Cyber Monday, a newfangled online day created when Bill Gates invented computer greed and everybody decided they had to go shopping for the things they missed on Friday and they have it all in one gigantic stop for cyber-shopping on the Cyber Monday site. All that is, except for the $750 race car game in a suitcase called Mini-Kart Bahn. Unfortunately, the product is from a German company and that site is in German so you will miss out on the subtle translations from the allegedly Googly-ized English version which include an opportunity to "provoke friends, colleagues and business partners to the exciting duel" as "everyone will be astonished, if you open the suitcase, a perfect Kart plant shows up". Of course, "it's a valuable collecting tank and lover object" and "if you hurry with this noble aluminum document suitcase, nobody suspects that you lead your favorite toy with itself!" Ha-ha – fooled them all! Those silly business partners.

Finally, the Lounge Scientists, have finally devised the perfect way to cut a cake – and just in time for the holidays! In order to avoid endless adolescent battles of "She got more than me!" and without resorting to killing the actual adolescents involved, which of course, would then involve, lawyers – and nobody wants to go through that kind of pain – the scientists came up with their top-secret Surplus Procedure plan, which they are only uncloaking now because nobody wants a bigger portion of holiday fruitcake than they deserve. The Surplus Procedure plan is for two people while the deluxe model Equitability Procedure is for three or more people, but both ask people to decide which portion of the cake they "value" the most, meaning people must be relied upon to be truthful with the cake-cutting referees.

"These procedures are new and have never been tried out in real-world applications," says Lounge Scientist #39, Steven Brams of the University of Graz in Austria, of the flaws in the plans, who found himself peculiarly hungry after devising the plans.

These plans, of course, would never work for the Pac-10 and Fox Sports when it came to divvying up the post-season hoops tournaments as Fox adheres to the unorthodox but simple Gluttony Procedure plan, which embraces one basic principle - all for them and none for anybody else.

+++++++sponsored by Clark's Restaurant+++++++++

Attention COUGAR Fans! Autumn is here! Time to feed that appetite. How can you afford to go one day further without some tasty morsels from Clark's Restaurant in Grays Harbor – home of the Best Hamburger in Twin Harbors for seven consecutive years? Come in for the burger, fresh homemade fries and milkshakes concocted from homemade ice cream. Go ahead, we dare you to try and pass up more than 12 varieties of hamburgers to choose from, full dinners, lunch and full breakfast served daily. Clark's Restaurant 360.538.1487. Seven miles south of Aberdeen, Washington on Highway 101. Proud supporter of CougZone. Mention this ad for a free small hot chocolate.